Thursday, December 11, 2014

This Week in Book Covers 1st December - 5th December

While I’m not a big fan of this style of cover, I think this does it well. It’s cartoony and fun - which, after all, is the very essence of this book. We have Humpty Dumpty just to drive it home - and a gun in classic retro-crime novel style as well; all the elements are there. I can’t say I like the cover but it does the job admirably

I find this cover interesting because here we have a male protagonist presented in a pose that is very similar to poses we see of a lot of female characters on book covers - but there are noted differences. Like his back is to us - but while that would be a classic arse-showing pose, his jeans are loose and he isn’t wearing tight leather. He’s wearing a vest, but it’s not midrift and the limited flesh it shows - his arms - are covered by writing or off the cover; more the black of the top coupled with the background makes it hard to track the shape of his upper body at all. It’s a classic cover angle with none of the sexualisation we are used to seeing

Beyond that, the cover is very noir and definitely covers that angle of the book perfectly, less so the fantasic, faerie elements. I do like how the monochrome of the cover makes Blue’s hair so shockingly vibrant.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why is it that books I don’t care for tend to have such beautiful covers? Is it some kind of cosmic justice? Do publishers read books and think “well damn, word of mouth isn’t going to move this one - better shell out for the really good cover artist”?

It’s beautiful, it’s very evocative of the setting and the birds add just this sense of creepiness. It doesn’t, really, have a great deal to do with the plot - but since I can’t actually hammer down what the plot’s supposed to be I can’t really criticise it for that

Mantitteh! The Mantitteh has landed! Mantitteh in impractical but sexy leather! Which is, unfortunately, pretty much all we can say about this cover. He’s a very attractive man, certainly, and a very distinctive one but that just tells me there’s an attractive man inside and, no doubt a romance.

Angels, vampires, even a fantasy element? It’s all kind of missing from this cover. We have a house, night time and hot guy. He could be a vampire, he could be a yummy biker, he could be an international bounty hunter - he could be absolutely anything and the setting could be absolutely anything. House. Hot guy. Leather. This book deserves better. Even if he is very very yummy indeed